Our Epic Goodbye
by Mystic25
Summary: "The Departed" Damon told Stefan to call him if he started coughing up a lung. What if he did? WARNING: Implied Character Death.


"Our Epic Goodbye"

Summary: An AU scene for "The Departed" Damon told Stefan to call him if he started coughing up a lung. What if he did? WARNING: Implied Character Death.

Rating: T for language and imagery.

Disclaimer: They belong to everyone who isn't me.

A/N: Second VD story yay! I loved The Departed, it was an amazing, amazing I totally feel for Elena; but I wanted a moment between Stefan and Damon.

A/N#2: This implies a character death, not to be macabre. But because it was a scenario that struck me about two brothers that could not be written any other way. If this is not going to sit well with you, you have every permission to pursue other endeavors. And this is going to ignore the fact that Klaus was transported to Tyler's body (poor Tyler) and going on an AU where he actually bought it.

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"_Are we supposed to have our epic goodbye Stefan?"_

-"Damon Salvatore"

Vampire Diaries: Episode: "The Departed."

_"Nobody said it was easy; it's such a shame for us to part. _

_Nobody said it was easy... no one ever said it would be this hard." _

– Coldplay "The Scientist"

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The coffin behind Damon's back was hard.

Which was funny for some reason that he couldn't name.

Maybe because he was a doomed man, well in theory.

He hadn't been a man in oh about, 120 years or so.

So really he was just doomed.

S-c-r-e-w-e-d.

His loosely grasped his iPhone in his hand, rotating it, playing with the buttons, like he had ADD, or like he was about to die and had just been told that he would do so alone.

Elena Gilbert had chosen. She had stared into the vast depth of her deepest innermost hearts and had chosen her worthy mate.

And of course it wasn't him. That would've been too easy too "Hallmark Moment" at least for Damon. Instead the girl he secretly pinned for before he _openly_ pinned for her had decided to "let him go." in favor of her own Hallmark moment. With Stefan.

God it was always Stefan.

Stefan the hero.

Stefan the do-gooder.

Stefan who got every damn thing he ever wanted, even when he fucked up so many times there weren't enough hands in existence to tick them all off on.

Even when his brother was faced with his painful, ironic demise- and it was ironic, given that they were supposed to be _immortal_ beings –Stefan still came out on top.

He would have his last moment with Elena, go out feeling noble, and self righteous and loved.

And Damon would just sit here, alone, with the dead body of Klaus, ticking down the seconds until his heart gave out.

It was all so super.

His phone rang in his palms. He glanced down, at first expecting it to be Elena. Not to declare a loyalty change, nope she had made her decision, and her stubborn streak ran as long as his age. But maybe, just for the hell of it, she was checking to see if he was still kicking. The proverbial poke-the-still-body-with-a-stick-to-see-if-it-moves gesture. And because it was Elena, probably with some weepy explanation of how it was "meant to be." and how she was "sorry" and to "let go Damon."

The display told another story:

_Stefan._

And the hits just keep on coming.

Damon gives his famous dry smirk in a room where no one else was alive to see it.

"If you're calling to gloat Stefan, now's kind of a shitty time."

"_How are you?"_

Stefan sounded like he was running. Damon could hear '_rshing_' noises as he moved past trees. Maybe he was racing towards his beloved at this very moment, about to shake her down in a log cabin for really rough sex. Hey it would've worked in Breaking Dawn if that woman actually knew how to write.

Damon snorted softly. "Well my life sucks like an eternal vacuum, but it's okay because I'm about to die a horrible death anyway, so I'm fantastic. How's Elena?"

"_Have you felt anything yet?"_

His brother apparently was going to ignore all questions about Elena, for about the first time in 2 years, and focus on him. _Perfect timing Stef._ "My ass is asleep Stefan, but no _creeping_ notes of death have played upon my character yet." Damon snuffled, stretching out a cramp in his leg, drawing it up into a bend, leaning back more against the mahogany coffin. He got more comfortable, before throwing out his next words in a tired, I don't-give-a-crap-because-I'm-going-to-die-alone tone: "Why, you feel something?"

" _I don't know."_

Damon found his eyebrows knitting down unconsciously. "I'm going to snuff it here Stef, so could you be a little less of your usual cryptic self?"

There was a pause on the other line. _"You really don't feel anything yet?"_

"Well I'm starting to feel pissed that my little brother is running my last chance to fantasize about naked women before I shuffle off this Mortal Coil."

Stefan's dry laughter crackled over the other line. "Sorry about ruining your last moments on earth Brother."

"You should be. I need my amusement." Damon stretched his other leg, enjoying the feeling while it lasted. It was amazing how his impending death (at least the second one) made him miss simple things like stretching his muscles. "Where are you anyway?"

"_In the woods somewhere."_

Damon huffed an eye roll at his brother. "You are a fount of description Brother; but you're probably saving your last good poetic couplets for Elena."

"_I'm not with Elena Damon." _

Damon scowled at the empty room. "What do you mean you're not with Elena? That was sort of the point. You're her rock star Stefan. You won-" Damon lets his head fall back along the coffin, and slide down a bit on the wood, letting the hurt slide there too instead of in his voice. "I'll bet she won't refuse _anything. _ Think, there could be _chains."_

Stefan laughed again, still dry. Damon could picture that loopy stupid smile that came after his cynical laugh like that.

"_I had to keep my promise first brother—"_

Damon tugs a fake smile: "And what promise would that be Stefan?"

" _You told me to call you if I coughed up a lung."_

Damon felt the coffin leave his back at the same time as his smile left his face. He he sat up, the emptiness of the room the only witness to the tighter grip he placed on the phone. "And have you?" It was said flippantly, but Damon's dead heart beat just little faster.

"_Not yet at least,"_ more dry laughter, that suddenly ended wet, and the phone crackled out for a second.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dead cardiac tissue beat even harder, when the wet sounding hacking noise was amplified, and enveloped the earlier sound of the wind blowing across the phone. "Stef-_Stefan!"_ Damon's call morphed into a yell at all the noises before Stefan's voice reentered the line.

"_Point of observation Brother. Tasting your own blood is a little bit disgusting, even for a vampire."_ Stefan spit something out on the other end of the line.

"How much you lose?" Damon stood up, gripping the handles of Klaus's coffin, not noticing that he was using it to keep himself level.

There was another round of coughing and spitting, that made the blood pound in Damon's ears.

"_Don't know, it's too dark to see out here Damon. But I'm going to guess probably enough to count."_ Stefan said this almost as to the point as a news broadcast about the upcoming weather.

"You were never good at counting Stefan," Damon throws back. "Or lying about your ability to see in the dark."

There is a sound of a long, almost painful sounding sigh, then a creaking sound of wood, like Stefan is sitting down on something. _"You were always so cynical Damon, it's almost admirable."_

"Still lying, Stef, like I said you're not good at it." Damon finds himself leaning over Klaus's coffin like it is a table, trying to pretend that the gesture was non chalet, the devil may care way he always was, and not because it was the only thing grounding him. "And don't think I don't know what you're doing brother."

"_What is it you think I'm doing Damon?"_ the coughing came back over the line. And it was unnerving, because it was wet, thick, vicious, coming out of someone who could not get sick.

"You really want to do another take of this, with you there, and me inches away from our Ultimate BFF?"

"_We have to have our Epic Goodbye, Damon."_

Damon's felt the shift. It was small, but it was like a piece of sediment that fell just right to damn the entire river. He heard just the tiniest _crack_, that took him several seconds to recognize as the sound of his hand impacting a crack into his iPhone, and breaking a piece if it away.

"No." Damon said simply, wholly.

"_You were the one who wanted it Brother-"_

"Well I was _lying_ Stefan," Damon returns and retreats away from the coffin, doing laps around the empty concrete parking lot, not really knowing what he was searching for, just moving. "C'mon, I don't even feel anything yet, how are you?"

"_I don't know Damon, I've never had my bloodline snuffed out by an Original before-"_

"Get off your ass and jog around the woods," Damon throws out, like it is an instant Cure All to this fucked up mess. "Shake it off."

That stupid laughter is back over the phone, that cynical, tired, resigned.

"_Just tell me goodbye Brother-"_

"You're not dying Stefan!" Damon has stopped moving, stopped everything, a hand braced against a concrete pillar, his shouts echoing off them.

"_I'm sorry."_

That horrible wet sounding cough is back, but it is louder, it becomes retching. Damon hears Stefan fall off whatever he's sitting on.

"Damnit! I told you you're not dying!" Damon barks into the phone like if says it as an order, it will cease.

Damon hears something horrible come out of Stefan, he knows the vicious sound of blood when he hears it.

"_Damon-"_

Damon had been a brother for 145 years. In that vast amount of time he had heard his brother's voice in a myriad of timbres, angry, stoned, murderous, remorseful. But had been years, unaccountable _years_ since he heard it like this –

145 years of Stefan's tells, and Damon knew. Stefan had given up a last moment with a woman he had fought for and loved in two lifetimes, and was sitting alone in a pile of woods –

He didn't want to spent his last moments with Elena.

"Stefan?" Damon felt the weight of 165 years slam into him, and tried to brush it aside."C'mon Stef, snap out of it."

"_I'm sorry about turning you Damon,_ _I just couldn't do this alone-"_ Stefan was cut off.

The next cough sounded like his brother's lung had actually come out with it.

"Ancient history brother, let's not rehash" Damon said, in something so mock casual it hurt. "Besides you're going to be fine."

"_Neither of us is fine Damon," _ Stefan managed a painful version of his dry laugh.

"Well I'm older Stefan, so what I say goes. " Damon finds himself sliding down the wall into a crouch. "And I'm not about to let you die before me, It's never going to sit right."

"_Do you feel anything yet?"_

Damon felt the pieces of his phone hitting his leg. It almost felt like crying.

He knew that tone.

Stefan was scared.

Scared like his _little brother_, who needed him, who wasn't so resigned to die as he believed, who was scared to feel this kind of pain if Damon didn't say it was okay because he felt it too, and it wasn't so bad.

Damon would've thrown the phone if it wasn't the only thing connecting him to Stefan. "Not yet." He remembers being here before, sitting on his huge bed of comforters with Rose, offering her dreams, giving her something of what he hoped was peace.

Except it wasn't the same at all.

Because it was his brother. It was so much more different.

It was always Stefan.

Stefan the do-gooder.

Stefan the hero.

Stefan the little brother who Damon was listening fucking _die_ over the fucking phone while he could do nothing but listen.

"_Remember that tree we found in the woods? The really old twisted oak we would climb on, and we tied a rope too for swinging? "_

"Don't do trips down memory lane brother, it's all too cliché," Damon says quickly so the silence trying to choke him off doesn't add to it.

"_I found it, its still here. It's what I was sitting on, at least until that last round of blood letting knocked me off of it. Still I'm leaning against it."_

Damon's eyes suddenly closed. _Damn fucking-_

"_I don't regret you as much as you think Damon," _ Stefan's words were becoming strained, like it was harder to breathe. _"I don't think I ever really regretted you—I think I always just needed you –I just didn't know how to say it."_

"If your next damn line is I love you Damon, I'm going to come through this phone and kill you myself!" Damon angry, but it wasn't a real anger, it was a stone's throw away from panic.

"_If it meant I could see you brother-"_

"Shut up Stefan!" Damon barked, not wanting to hear anymore, not wanting to hear Stefan's fading breath's or hear Stefan at all, but at the same time wanting too, wanting all of it, because somehow that was all the fucking point.

The coughing that came next was horrendous, more so then any of the others, and it didn't stop, it kept going, oblivious to the yells that Damon was shouting.

"Stef- Stefan! Damnit brother, answer me!" Another piece of phone broke off, shattering to the floor. "You're fine little brother, you understand?" it was the a demand that had nothing to back it up but a pain that Damon didn't want to think about. Before they had turned, it was such commonplace to comfort his younger sibling like this, to lie, because he knew that lie or not, all Stefan really wanted was to hear the sound of Damon's voice.

"You're fine."

It was a tone he hadn't used in a century. And he didn't want to use it now.

Because it meant something like this.

"_Damon-"_

Damon could _hear _ the next words, the taboo, clinched thing that Stefan would say that Damon would instantly shoot down before the coughing that had continued for long moments, for too long, stopped, all of a sudden.

And Damon was left with a thick, complete silence.

"Stefan?" Damon's voice was whispered quiet. Damon can feel something shatter that isn't the phone, something that happened the moment the exact moment the silence happened "_Stefan?"_

Nothing, except a call of a bird he heard somewhere on the other end.

"No." Damon said it like a statement, the phone suddenly broke in half in his hand. _"_No, no, no-Stefan-you are not dead!" He screams into the empty phone. "You are not dead!"

He stares at the phone before breaking it completely in half, before throwing it. Before propelling himself upwards and punching huge dents into the concrete.

He looms over Klaus's coffin. "You bitch!" He propels the coffin against the wall and it slams there and the lid pops open, revealing Klaus body, chained, the dagger deep in his heart.

Damon wants to drive the stake deeper inside the corpse, he wants to pull it out and impale himself.

But he doesn't do either.

He punches the wall again, harder raining concrete dust down on him like an explosion, Then he folds like a battered paper doll and digs a heel into the one of his eyes, that leak thick tears that burn like Vervain down his skin.

The concrete behind his back is hard.

And Stefan is dead.

His stupid little brother.

His baby brother.

He's gone.

And Damon forgets Elena, forgets all of it.

Because he wants to be gone too.

Faster then he knows he will be. He doesn't have much life left, he knows it. But he doesn't even want those last grains to filter through his hour glass.

He wants want he can't have, what he just heard end after 145 years.

He presses his back into the pillar, and waits to die, waits for it to go away.

Because it was always Stefan.

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**xxxxXxxx**

**End.**

I know this is horribly depressing and wrong of me to do. But that episode had me in almost tears, Stefan and Damon's phone conversation struck me quite hard. That even under all of Damon's snark and attitude he was waiting for a goodbye from his brother, and Stefan was waiting to see if Damon felt any pain. Their relationship is the most intriguing to me on the show above all else.

R/R please

Mystic


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